Toggle menu
Toggle personal menu
Not logged in
Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits.

Roman Empire (27 BCE–395 CE)

From ProleWiki, the proletarian encyclopedia
More languages
Revision as of 23:08, 27 August 2022 by Ledlecreeper27 (talk | contribs)
Roman Empire
Imperium Rōmānum
Βασιλεία τῶν Ῥωμαίων
27 BCE–395 CE
The Roman Empire in 280
The Roman Empire in 280
Common languagesLatin
Ancient Greek
Dominant mode of productionSlavery
History
• Empire established
27 BCE
• East-West division
17 January 395 CE
• Fall of Western Roman Empire
4 September 476
Population
• 25 BCE estimate
56,800,000


The Roman Empire was an ancient state that existed in Europe, West Asia, and North Africa. While the western part of the Roman Empire fell in 476 CE, the eastern part would live on for nearly a thousand years, until 1453 CE.

Mode of production

Ancient Rome was a slave society that relied on war for its supply of slaves. The wealthy ruling class lived their whole lives without working and viewed their slaves as subhuman.[1] In the last two centuries of the empire, the slave mode of production began to decline. Population and production decreased and many large estates were broken into smaller ones. Slave owners freed many slaves because they could not profit from their labor and because many slaves intentionally destroyed or damaged the means of production. These people became small-scale producers called coloni, who later developed into the serfs of feudalism.

The Roman Empire was weakened by internal slave revolts and external invasions and eventually collapsed, ending slavery as the dominant mode of production in Europe.[2]

References

  1. Richard Becker (2008-05-29). "Ancient Greece and Rome: Democracy for the few, slavery for the many" Liberation School. Archived from the original on 2020-09-22. Retrieved 2022-08-27.
  2. Institute of Economics of the Academy of sciences of the USSR (1957). Political Economy: 'The Slave-Owning Mode of Production' (pp. 35–36). [PDF] London: Lawrence & Wishart.